Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 217; Bus Emergency Exits and Window Retention and Release

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 571</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2025-0040]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2127-AM91</RIN> <SUBJECT>Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 217; Bus Emergency Exits and Window Retention and Release</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NHTSA is proposing to remove obsolete requirements from Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 217, Bus emergency exits and window retention and release. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received within 60 days of May 30, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments electronically to the docket identified in the heading of this document by visiting the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Alternatively, you can file comments using the following methods: • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management Facility: U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call (202) 366-9826 before coming. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 493-2251. Regardless of how you submit your comments, you should mention the docket number identified in the heading of this document. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency name and docket number or Regulatory Information Number (RIN) for this rulemaking. For detailed instructions on submitting comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the Public Participation heading of the Supplementary Information section of this document. Note that all comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. Please see the Privacy Act heading below. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> You may also access the docket at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal Holidays. Telephone: 202-366-9826. <E T="03">Confidential Business Information:</E> If you claim that any of the information in your comment (including any additional documents or attachments) constitutes confidential business information within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(4) or is protected from disclosure pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 1905, please see the detailed instructions given under the Public Participation heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> Please see the Privacy Act heading under the Regulatory Analyses section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For technical issues, you may contact Cristina Echemendia at <E T="03">cristina.echemendia@dot.gov.</E> For legal issues, you may contact John Piazza at <E T="03">john.piazza@dot.gov.</E> You can reach these officials by phone at 202-366-1810. <E T="03">Address:</E> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Washington, DC 20590. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NHTSA is proposing to remove obsolete requirements from FMVSS No. 217 as the requirements apply to school buses manufactured before September 1, 1994. We seek comment on all aspects of this proposal. This action does not affect the applicability of 49 U.S.C. 30122, which prohibits certain entities from making inoperative any part of a device or element of design installed in vehicle pursuant to an FMVSS applicable on the date of manufacture. <HD SOURCE="HED">Authority:</HD> 49 U.S.C. 322, 30111, 30115, 30117, 30166; delegation of authority at 49 CFR 1.95. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Analyses</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive Orders 12866 and 13563</HD> This proposed rule does not meet the criteria of a “significant regulatory action” under Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Orders 14215 and 13563. Therefore, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has not reviewed this proposed rule under those orders. This NPRM, if finalized as proposed, is also expected to be an E.O. 14192 deregulatory action. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Promoting International Regulatory Cooperation</HD> The policy statement in section 1 of Executive Order 13609 provides that the regulatory approaches taken by foreign governments may differ from those taken by the United States to address similar issues, and that in some cases the differences between them might not be necessary and might impair the ability of American businesses to export and compete internationally. It further recognizes that in meeting shared challenges involving health, safety, and other issues, international regulatory cooperation can identify approaches that are at least as protective as those that are or would be adopted in the absence of such cooperation and can reduce, eliminate, or prevent unnecessary differences in regulatory requirements. In addition, section 24211 of the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act, Global Harmonization, provides that DOT “shall cooperate, to the maximum extent practicable, with foreign governments, nongovernmental stakeholder groups, the motor vehicle industry, and consumer groups with respect to global harmonization of vehicle regulations as a means for improving motor vehicle safety.”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  H.R. 3684 (117th Congress) (2021). </FTNT> Because the proposed changes are deleting obsolete regulatory text, they do not implicate any issues regarding international regulatory cooperation. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Initial Regulatory Flexibility Act</HD> Under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) (5 U.S.C. 601-612) (as amended by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) of 1996; 5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), agencies must prepare and make available for public comment a regulatory flexibility analysis that describes the effect of the rulemaking on small entities ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> small businesses, small organizations, and small government jurisdictions). No regulatory flexibility analysis is required, however, if the head of an agency or an appropriate designee certifies that the rulemaking will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. NHTSA has concluded and hereby certifies that this proposed rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities; therefore, an analysis is not included. This proposed rule will only remove directives that are no longer needed. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Unfunded Mandates Reform Act</HD> This proposed rule does not contain Federal mandates (under the regulatory provisions of Title II of the UMRA) for State, local and Tribal governments, or the private sector of $100 million or more in any one year. Thus, the rulemaking is not subject to the requirements of sections 202 and 205 of the UMRA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive Order 13175</HD> Executive Order 13175 requires Federal agencies to consult and coordinate with Tribes on a government-to-government basis on policies that have Tribal implications, including regulations, legislative comments or proposed legislation, and other policy statements or actions that have substantial direct effects on one or more Indian Tribes, on the relationship between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes. NHTSA has assessed the impact of this proposed rule on Indian tribes and determined that this rulemaking would not have tribal implications that require consultation under Executive Order 13175. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Paperwork Reduction Act</HD> In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501-3520), an agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information, unless the collection displays a currently valid Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control number. This proposed rule is deregulatory and so would not impose any additional information collection requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E-Government Act Compliance</HD> NHTSA is committed to complying with the E-Government Act, 2002 to promote the use of the internet and other information technologies to provide increased opportunities for citizen access to Government information and services, and for other purposes. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive Order 13132; Federalism Summary Impact Statement</HD> The proposed rule is deregulatory and has little effect on States and local governments, so NHTSA anticipates that this rulemaking will not have implications for federalism. Therefore, under Section 6(b) of the Executive Order, a federalism summary is not required. States and local governments are invited to comment if they believe a federalism summary is necessary. <HD SOURCE="HD2">National Environmental Policy Act</HD> NHTSA believes this proposed rule, if finalized, would not have a reasonably foreseeable significant effect on the quality of the human environment. The public is invited to comment on the impact of the proposed agency a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━